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While the OFFICE of President remains in highest regard at NewEnergyNews, this administration's position on climate change makes it impossible to regard THIS president with respect. Below is the NewEnergyNews theme song until 2020.

This report summarizes the results of an expert elicitation survey of 163 of the world’s foremost wind energy experts, aimed at better understanding future wind energy costs and potential technology advancement. We specifically sought to gain insight on the possible magnitude of future cost reductions, the sources of those reductions, and the enabling conditions needed to realize continued innovation and lower costs. In implementing what may be the largest single elicitation ever performed on an energy technology in terms of expert participation, we sought to complement other tools for evaluating cost-reduction potential, including learning curves, engineering assessments, and other means of synthesizing expert knowledge. Wind applications covered by the survey include onshore, fixed-bottom offshore, and floating offshore wind. Ultimately, the study is intended to inform policy and planning decisions, research and development decisions, and industry investment and strategy development while also improving the representation of wind energy in energy-sector planning models…

Significant Cost Reductions Are Anticipated: The modern wind industry has matured substantially since its beginnings in the 1970s. Expert survey results show an expectation of continued reductions in the levelized cost of wind energy (LCOE). Figure ES-1 summarizes LCOE-reduction expectations for the median (50th percentile, or “best guess”) scenario, focusing on the median value of expert responses. Across all three wind applications, the LCOE is anticipated to decline by 24%–30% in 2030 and by 35%– 41% in 2050, relative to 2014 baseline values. Though percentage changes from the baseline are the most broadly applicable approach to presenting survey findings because each region and expert might have different baseline values, depicting the relative absolute value for expert-specified LCOE is also relevant (Figure ES-2). In these terms, onshore wind is expected to remain less expensive than offshore—and fixed-bottom offshore less expensive than floating. However, there are greater absolute reductions (and more uncertainty) in the LCOE of offshore wind compared with onshore wind, and a narrowing gap between fixed-bottom and floating offshore, with especially sizable anticipated reductions in the LCOE of floating offshore wind between 2020 and 2030.

For onshore wind, capacity factor and CapEx improvements constitute the largest drivers of LCOE reduction in the median scenario. The importance of higher capacity factors is consistent with expert views on turbine characteristics, with scaling expected not only in turbine capacity ratings but also rotor diameters and hub heights. Higher hub heights result in higher wind speeds, and therefore capacity factors. Experts also predict greater scaling in rotor swept area than in turbine capacity (leading to a reduction in specific power, defined as turbine capacity divided by rotor swept area), at least globally, also yielding higher capacity factors. For fixed-bottom offshore wind, CapEx and financing cost improvements are the largest contributors to LCOE reduction. The relatively higher importance of CapEx and lower importance of capacity factor is consistent with expert opinions on future offshore turbine size: expected turbine capacity ratings (and hub heights) grow significantly in order to minimize CapEx, but specific power is expected to remain roughly at recent levels. Capacity factor improvements play a larger role for floating offshore wind (relative to the 2014 baseline for fixed-bottom), perhaps reflecting a belief that floating technology will tend to be deployed in windier sites as enabled by the ability to access deeper water locations. Financing cost reductions are more important for offshore than for onshore wind, presumably due to its lower level of market maturity.

Opportunity Space for Greater Cost Reductions Is Sizable: We sought expert insight not only on the median (50th percentile) LCOE scenario, but also on less-likely scenarios for high and low future LCOEs. The resulting range in expert-specified LCOEs (Figure ES-5) suggests significant uncertainty in the degree and timing of future advancements. On the other hand, managing this uncertainty is—at least partially—within the control of public and private decision makers; the low scenario, in particular, represents what might be possible through aggressive research, development, and deployment. Under the low scenario and across all three wind applications, experts predict LCOE percentage reductions of more than 40% by 2030 and more than 50% by 2050. The full report highlights how survey respondents believe that such LCOE reductions might be achieved. Those results further show that “learning with market growth” and “research and development” are the two most-significant broad enablers for the low LCOE scenario for both onshore and offshore wind.

Many Advancement Opportunities Exist: A variety of development, technology, design, manufacturing, construction, operational, and market changes might contribute to reducing LCOE. Respondents rated 28 different drivers based on their expected impact on LCOE. The top-5 responses for each wind application are listed in Figure ES-1, and a general summary of the findings is shown in Figure ES-6. That the two leading drivers for LCOE reduction for onshore wind are related to rotors—increased rotor diameters and lower specific power, and rotor design advancements—confirms earlier survey results highlighting capacity factor improvements as a major contributor to LCOE reduction. Increased hub heights, coming in at number three on the ranked list, are also consistent with this theme. The relative ranking differs for offshore wind. For fixed-bottom offshore, the most highly rated advancements include increased turbine capacity ratings, design advancements for foundations and support structures, and reduced financing costs and project contingencies. Some of the same items rate highly for floating offshore wind, with an even greater emphasis on foundations and support structures as well as installation processes.

Cost Reductions Are Uncertain, Differ by Respondent Demographics: Considerable uncertainty exists across all of these variables and factors, partly reflected in the range between the low, median, and high scenarios shown in Figure ES-5. Differences are also found when reviewing the range in expertspecific responses, as shown in the 25th to 75th percentile expert ranges depicted in Figures ES-1 and ES- 2. Some of the variation in expert-specific responses can be explained by segmenting respondents into various categories. For example, we find that a smaller “leading-expert” group generally expects moreaggressive wind energy cost reductions than the larger set of other survey respondents, whereas equipment manufacturers are more cautious about nearer-term advancement possibilities.

Comparing Survey Results with Historical LCOE Estimates and Other Forecasts: Notwithstanding the sizable range in LCOE estimates reflected in the expert survey results, those results are found to be broadly consistent with historical LCOE trends—at least for onshore wind. Figure ES-7 depicts four separate estimates of historical onshore wind LCOE and associated single-factor learning rates (LRs = 10.5%–18.6%, meaning that LCOE declines by this amount for each doubling of global cumulative wind capacity). Though learning rates are an imperfect tool for understanding the drivers of past cost reduction or forecasting future costs, the implicit learning rate embedded in the median-scenario LCOE forecast from our experts to 2030 (about 14%–18%, depending on the magnitude of future wind capacity deployment in that median scenario) is squarely within the range of these past, long-term learning trends for onshore LCOE. Turning to offshore wind, historical cost trends are mixed, with an initial reduction in costs for the first fixed-bottom offshore wind installations in the 1990s, following by steeply increasing costs in the 2000s and, most recently, some indication of cost reductions. Given this history, there have been few attempts to fit a learning curve to offshore data. It is also unclear what learning specification might best be used to understand past trends or to forecast future ones, as offshore wind costs might decline as a result of both onshore and offshore experience. Overall, expert survey findings on offshore LCOE reductions suggest that experts either anticipate lower offshore-only learning (relative to learning for onshore wind) or expect learning spillovers from onshore to offshore.

Expert elicitation results can also be compared to other forecasts of LCOE—whether derived from learning curves, engineering assessments, expert knowledge, or some combination of the three (Figure ES-8). As shown, expert survey results are broadly within the range of other forecasts, but the elicitation tends to show greater expectations for LCOE reductions for onshore wind in the median scenario than the majority of other forecasts. Survey results for offshore wind, on the other hand, tend to be more conservative than the broader literature, with a large number of the other forecasts showing steeper cost reductions than even the low-scenario expert survey results.

Learning Estimates: Getting it Right: As shown earlier in Figure ES-7, elicitation results for onshore wind are consistent with historical LCOE learning, suggesting that properly constructed learning rates may be reasonably used to forecast future costs in more mature applications. However, the majority of the literature assessing historical learning rates for wind has emphasized only upfront capital costs, and some energy-sector and integrated-assessment models rely on those capital-cost-based learning estimates when forecasting future costs. Expert elicitation findings demonstrate that capital-cost improvements are only one means of achieving LCOE reductions, however, and not always the dominant one. Extrapolation of past capital-cost-based learning models therefore likely understates the opportunities for future LCOE reduction by ignoring major drivers for that reduction. This is illustrated by the fact that the elicitation-based forward-looking LCOE learning rates are twice as high as recently estimated CapEx-based learning rates for onshore wind of 6-9%, and may explain why onshore cost reduction estimates from wind experts are more aggressive than many past forecasts.

Review of OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The American Decades by Mark S. Friedman

OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The American Decades, the second volume of Herman K. Trabish’s retelling of oil’s history in fiction, picks up where the first book in the series, OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The Story of Our Addiction, left off. The new book is an engrossing, informative and entertaining tale of the Roaring 20s, World War II and the Cold War. You don’t have to know anything about the first historical fiction’s adventures set between the Civil War, when oil became a major commodity, and World War I, when it became a vital commodity, to enjoy this new chronicle of the U.S. emergence as a world superpower and a world oil power.

As the new book opens, Lefash, a minor character in the first book, witnesses the role Big Oil played in designing the post-Great War world at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. Unjustly implicated in a murder perpetrated by Big Oil agents, LeFash takes the name Livingstone and flees to the U.S. to clear himself. Livingstone’s quest leads him through Babe Ruth’s New York City and Al Capone’s Chicago into oil boom Oklahoma. Stymied by oil and circumstance, Livingstone marries, has a son and eventually, surprisingly, resolves his grievances with the murderer and with oil.

In the new novel’s second episode the oil-and-auto-industry dynasty from the first book re-emerges in the charismatic person of Victoria Wade Bridger, “the woman everybody loved.” Victoria meets Saudi dynasty founder Ibn Saud, spies for the State Department in the Vichy embassy in Washington, D.C., and – for profound and moving personal reasons – accepts a mission into the heart of Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe. Underlying all Victoria’s travels is the struggle between the allies and axis for control of the crucial oil resources that drove World War II.

As the Cold War begins, the novel’s third episode recounts the historic 1951 moment when Britain’s MI-6 handed off its operations in Iran to the CIA, marking the end to Britain’s dark manipulations and the beginning of the same work by the CIA. But in Trabish’s telling, the covert overthrow of Mossadeq in favor of the ill-fated Shah becomes a compelling romance and a melodramatic homage to the iconic “Casablanca” of Bogart and Bergman.

Monty Livingstone, veteran of an oil field youth, European WWII combat and a star-crossed post-war Berlin affair with a Russian female soldier, comes to 1951 Iran working for a U.S. oil company. He re-encounters his lost Russian love, now a Soviet agent helping prop up Mossadeq and extend Mother Russia’s Iranian oil ambitions. The reunited lovers are caught in a web of political, religious and Cold War forces until oil and power merge to restore the Shah to his future fate. The romance ends satisfyingly, America and the Soviet Union are the only forces left on the world stage and ambiguity is resolved with the answer so many of Trabish’s characters ultimately turn to: Oil.

Commenting on a recent National Petroleum Council report calling for government subsidies of the fossil fuels industries, a distinguished scholar said, “It appears that the whole report buys these dubious arguments that the consumer of energy is somehow stupid about energy…” Trabish’s great and important accomplishment is that you cannot read his emotionally engaging and informative tall tales and remain that stupid energy consumer. With our world rushing headlong toward Peak Oil and epic climate change, the OIL IN THEIR BLOOD series is a timely service as well as a consummate literary performance.

Review of OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The Story of Our Addiction by Mark S. Friedman

"...ours is a culture of energy illiterates." (Paul Roberts, THE END OF OIL)

OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, a superb new historical fiction by Herman K. Trabish, addresses our energy illiteracy by putting the development of our addiction into a story about real people, giving readers a chance to think about how our addiction happened. Trabish's style is fine, straightforward storytelling and he tells his stories through his characters.

The book is the answer an oil family's matriarch gives to an interviewer who asks her to pass judgment on the industry. Like history itself, it is easier to tell stories about the oil industry than to judge it. She and Trabish let readers come to their own conclusions.

She begins by telling the story of her parents in post-Civil War western Pennsylvania, when oil became big business. This part of the story is like a John Ford western and its characters are classic American melodramatic heroes, heroines and villains.

In Part II, the matriarch tells the tragic story of the second generation and reveals how she came to be part of the tales. We see oil become an international commodity, traded on Wall Street and sought from London to Baku to Mesopotamia to Borneo. A baseball subplot compares the growth of the oil business to the growth of baseball, a fascinating reflection of our current president's personal career.

There is an unforgettable image near the center of the story: International oil entrepreneurs talk on a Baku street. This is Trabish at his best, portraying good men doing bad and bad men doing good, all laying plans for wealth and power in the muddy, oily alley of a tiny ancient town in the middle of everywhere. Because Part I was about triumphant American heroes, the tragedy here is entirely unexpected, despite Trabish's repeated allusions to other stories (Casey At The Bat, Hamlet) that do not end well.

In the final section, World War I looms. Baseball takes a back seat to early auto racing and oil-fueled modernity explodes. Love struggles with lust. A cavalry troop collides with an army truck. Here, Trabish has more than tragedy in mind. His lonely, confused young protagonist moves through the horrible destruction of the Romanian oilfields only to suffer worse and worse horrors, until--unexpectedly--he finds something, something a reviewer cannot reveal. Finally, the question of oil must be settled, so the oil industry comes back into the story in a way that is beyond good and bad, beyond melodrama and tragedy.

Along the way, Trabish gives readers a greater awareness of oil and how we became addicted to it. Awareness, Paul Roberts said in THE END OF OIL, "...may be the first tentative step toward building a more sustainable energy economy. Or it may simply mean that when our energy system does begin to fail, and we begin to lose everything that energy once supplied, we won't be so surprised."

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